6G standardization faces a real risk of fragmentation, with spectrum policy and disputes over the role of artificial intelligence emerging as the principal fault lines, analyst Téral has warned in comments reported by RCR Wireless News.

The warning lands while the industry is still defining what 6G will be. Standards bodies have begun the early study phases for the next generation of mobile technology, with commercial networks not expected before the end of the decade. Téral's argument is that two unresolved questions — which spectrum 6G will use, and how AI will sit inside the standard — could split the work into incompatible regional tracks rather than one global specification.

Why spectrum is the first fault line

Spectrum has divided regulators before. The 5G era produced a patchwork of mid-band assignments, with the United States, Europe and Asia each building networks around different frequency ranges after prolonged arguments over C-band availability and millimeter-wave policy. Téral's caution is that 6G could repeat that pattern on a larger scale.

Candidate bands for 6G sit higher in the radio spectrum than anything used commercially today. Regulators in different regions have started divergent studies of these upper mid-band and sub-terahertz ranges. If Washington, Brussels and Beijing each anchor their 6G plans in different spectrum, chipset makers and equipment vendors would face separate radio requirements per region. That outcome raises device costs and slows rollout — the fragmentation scenario Téral points to.

What does the AI dispute actually change?

The second fault line is newer. AI-native air-interface design has become a contested theme in early 6G research, with disagreement over whether machine-learning functions should be embedded in the standard itself or remain vendor-specific capabilities layered on top.

The distinction matters commercially. A standardized AI interface would let operators mix vendors more freely and push differentiation into applications. Vendor-proprietary AI would tie operators more tightly to single suppliers and make cross-border interoperability harder to guarantee. Geopolitics compounds the question: AI policy is now a field of open trade and security friction between major economies, and standards bodies must operate across that divide.

Fragmentation would carry a measurable cost

The industry has lived through a split standard once. The 3G era saw competing CDMA and WCDMA tracks, which produced regional device variants, duplicated silicon designs and slower global roaming adoption. The 4G and 5G eras converged around a single global specification, and that convergence is widely credited with the scale economics of modern smartphones.

Téral's warning therefore reads as a reminder of what the industry loses if 6G repeats the 3G pattern. Equipment vendors would develop parallel product lines. Operators with international footprints would face separate procurement per region. Subscribers would see later availability of 6G devices, since component makers would wait for regional volumes to justify production runs.

What happens next

The formal 6G standardization work sits with 3GPP at the global level and with the ITU at the requirements level, with regional bodies in Europe, North America and Asia feeding positions into both. Spectrum studies run in parallel through the ITU's radiocommunication sector and through national regulators, and those studies will shape which bands any future standard can realistically use.

The coming months of study-phase work — where regional positions on spectrum and on AI's place in the architecture get fixed into contributions — will determine whether the industry writes one 6G specification or several. Téral's warning gives that routine standards mechanics a commercial stake: the cost of getting it wrong falls on vendors, operators and ultimately subscribers.